fine whine

I was in a presentation today, and heard about a group of people who were "positioned and goaled" to do something or other. Now 'position' has for a long time been an acceptable verb, but 'goal'? I assume from context that the people had been given a goal or a goal had been set for them, but I am at a loss to come up with another such usage. A goal just isn't something that can be given like a slap or a kiss. Someone can be given a present or be presented something, but they cannot be goaled. It just sounds stupid.

I suppose I just don't understand the need for certain people (generally higher up in bureaucracies) to verb nouns. I mean, is it harder to say "they have a set goal" than "they are goaled"? It saves, what, one second to say? That second is lost then if the listener has to figure out what it means. Then again, in bureaucracies, lower-downs merely are expected to nod to higher-ups, not comprehend what they're saying.

Oddly enough, I had two experiences today that made me happy. First, I got to be a major part of rejecting a production run of a badly-made garment at work. You see, until my ship comes in and I have a computer engineering job, I'm working for a large multinational fashion and beauty empire, doing various menial jobs. Lately, in between days cutting boxes open, I've been working in somewhat of an inspector role. And the jean I was looking at today had a lot of issues. It was stitched badly, looked ugly, and (my own turn of phrase) the belt loops were throwing up. That is to say the inside belt loop was longer than the outside. Which is like putting a Large Fries container inside one from a Happy Meal (thankfully, I've never worked for the big M). In other words, it's crap.

The other thing that made me smile was an interview on NPR. Not the content of the interview, but the fact that I could still recognize what both sides were saying between the lines. Being able to decode that meant that despite my recent NPR-listening, I have yet to become a mindless liberal radio devotee. Or whatever NPR's sinister plot for hapless listeners could be. And not to say that NPR's evil—it's not. I had just begun to suspect that my brain was turning to mush.

These suspicions started long before I got the PS2. Really.